Page 55 of The Chance

“Jesus.” Ian’s string of curses that follow pull at the corner of my lips.

“Seriously?” I ask into the phone and blindly reach out for the bottle my fingers find and wrap around the neck of. “You leave me with this one? What the fuck?” I pin the remorseful guard with a stare that has his eyes shooting to the floor.

“I’m on my fucking way up.” Nodding when the line cuts off, I set my phone back on the high-top table I long ago took residence at and take a swig directly from the bottle.

Still, I keep my sight trained on my bodyguard who doesn’t bother to look up long enough to canvas the surrounding patrons. They’ve all been vetted, but that doesn’t mean his job is done. He doesn’t bring his gaze up from the fucking marble floor, even when the door at my back opens and Ian comesstriding through the VIP section with a burning rage flexing his fists.

“Go back to the hotel.” Simple, yet powerful, Ian’s way of communicating is always clear and direct. Like a pissed dad to an unruly teenager, he lays down the law with the new guy.

So when my new bodyguard decides it’s the time to argue, it’s just fuel to the already lit fire.

“Get the fuck out of my sight.” In a rare form, with a red-faced and using his hands to speak, Ian gestures to the door, just in case Paul forgot the way in is the same way out.

Like a lost puppy, the newbie tucks his tail along with his head and does the walk of shame across the mostly quiet floor. When I watch his back finally disappear through the door and into the crowd of partygoers, I ask my questions to the leader of their group.

“What the fuck, Ian?”

“I can’t discuss this with you, Mac.”

“Bullshit. You can. And you fucking will.” Blue eyes set under a buzzcut stare down at me like I’m the one out of my mind.

“Fine,” Ian growls when I don’t waiver and slams his ass into the chair next to me, his eyes floating over the crowd behind me for a moment, then coming back to me. “We need more fucking hands.”

I scoff and take another sip from the bottle only to hiss when the roach finally burns down enough to burn my fingers.

Ian snatches the mini fire and puts it out with a boot to the floor.

“And that fucker is it?” I say when his eyes come back to mine. “It’s beenyears, Ian. Literal years that Jordan had my back.”

He shakes his head, his hand coming up to run across his short hair. “How can you…” His voice trails off when another patron walks close to the table but keeps moving past us. “Mac, you’regoing to have to let me permanently assign you someone that isn’t Jordan.”

But I’m not in love with anyone else.

I don’t say that, though, because that’s almost as bad to tell his boss.

So, I settle with the other truths. “We knew each other. He got it. He didn’t fuck up once.”

“Except hehas.” Ian scoffs and flags the bartender over to order a soda with no ice like a real fucking weirdo. “And Jordan’s the one that opted out of this.”

“You don’t know him, Ian. He would have come if you’d told him to.”

“And you fuckin do?”Fuck, maybe he’s right.I shake my head as Ian’s beverage is placed on the table in front of him and the man takes a hike.

“I know enough,” I murmur with my heart in my throat.

Thinking back, Jordan never wanted to share about his past. He said his family were good people, but then always took the first opportunity to change the subject whenever it came up. There’s always been an air of mystery around it—them. The holidays, and the fact that Jordan never takes leave.

But I know that Ian knows more than that. More than what I know based on my internet sleuthing.

Jordan’s biological parents died in a house fire when he was fourteen—the very same age I came out to Ma as gay—and there wasn’t any extended family left to take him.

He ended up in the system, got in trouble a time or two, but nothing much past age seventeen was online. At least not that aciviliancould find.

It was me; I was the civilian, for fucking once.

“It’s more than you, Mac.” Ian sips his soda and nibbles the droplets from his bottom lip in thought. Eyes trailing slowly from the table back to me, he shakes his head.

“You mean Rex,” I correct and snag the bottle from the table.

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